Interviul lui Giorgi Shagidze pentru Business Media Georgia

Thank you for inviting me. Yes, and it's been almost two years of your physical absence.

Maib, sorry, it's my bank. What's the starting point and where do we stand so far? Yes, yes, sure, and thanks again for having me. Maybe first of all, it's the indisputable leader of the market, and in terms of the markets, more than certified for sure. It's about 35% in loans, and if you think about the other banks, number two is about 19%, number three is even 17%, and so on. And clearly, it is positioned as the indisputable leader across all the key products and the segments. Now, that said, though, we started to launch the transformation and refreshed our strategy, and we have lots of initiatives, and then again they can be grouped into four areas. Okay, please go ahead. Number one: this is customer experience, and to put the customer in the center of everything that we do. And this is a very big statement, and I know that many banks and companies, it is ambitious, many companies do it, but it really requires lots of transformation, lots of cultural changes and changes in the mindset. Okay, so and then we did do the brand refreshment, we have changed the operating model of our branches, especially design and the model is more important, of course. Number one is this is the customer in the center. Number two: this is digital and the initiatives in digital space. Of course, we are upgrading the user experience functionality of our digital banking channels, but on top of them, we are moving towards the super app where we want to create the ecosystem for cars, now automobiles, SME, housing, and so on.

Number three: this is IPO, and this is big as well. When the largest bank does the IPO, it acts as the gateway to bring new investors in the country, so this is very important, and this is a much bigger project than its direct impact to maib or share price or the capital position. So this will have a positive impact into the entire business climate of the country. And we started the preparation for this. There is a lot of regulatory changes required. We recently arranged the Moldova Capital Market Day on the London Stock Exchange, and we have planned plenty of investor engagement next this year, and so on. And number four: this is regional expansion with the digital product and services, and the word digital is key here. There are about one million more Moldovans living in the EU, and we want to approach them and offer the digital, we see you, yes, with the EU passport. So that will be the start of this.

Okay, no, I think you can do technically IPO if we decide. I mean, we can do the IPO, but I think if we want to position it correctly, get the right investors, get the even right share price, get the right impact, then we need to ensure that we have proper strategy, we have proper financial results, and that has some history, ambitions. Therefore, they are equally important. It's very difficult now to tell you which one is more important, which one is less important. Maybe IPO technical part is not that big, but the decision to go to IPO and to prepare the entire bank to change the governance, to change the mindset, to again play the role of the good days, relations with IFIs, a lot of things should be done. Of course, yeah, and then we have started it, and I would not say which one is more important at this stage, but IPO will have a big impact on the company.

Our basic scenario is 2023 first half. It could be even faster, earlier, I mean it depends on many things, but basic scenario is 2023 first half. Okay.

There are many similarities in Moldova and Georgia, starting with the past, then the vision to be integrated with the West. There are many similarities. The key difference is when we speak about the banking sector, is that the banking sector there is less penetrated, which creates more and more opportunity. So that's the key. It's less penetrated. Yes, it's clearly less penetrated than in Georgia, so maybe it's around the size of TBC when TBC was doing its IPO in 2014, so this is a very good starting point. But that said, many things have changed. We are looking to the other banks, other fintechs, other offerings. There are amazing offers and the business models from again, neobank or starting level to monobank, which you need to take into consideration if you are building a bank or banking offering for the future. There are many similarities. We will leverage from a Ukrainian company or team, which was a part of monobank in Ukraine, in the user experience direction. It's already your partner, yeah, am I right? The company which worked for monobank to do the user experience. Yes, we are, we have partnered with them for user experience of our digital product, and we want to achieve the breakthrough with them. There are other areas we are engaging the companies from the region with quite cutting edge offers and services. So, 2022, did you see our Christmas tree, which looks like very digital? I was amazed by a drone show as well, and the Christmas tree was fantastic. Yeah, so 2022 for us will be very digital focus, and we will be launching many innovations and many new attractive products for the customers during the year.

Yes, they will be, they will be public.

The corporate governance is quite proper. We have seven members on the board, three independent members of the board. All the committees, most of them are chaired by the independent members. EBRD is one of our shareholders and obviously is committed to the long-term improvement of the corporate governance standard, and so on. But you know, there is no limit to the continuous improvements, right? So there are many things that we will plan to do. The new shareholders entered the bank in 2018, where the change broadly started. So we refreshed this strategy last year, and again these four pillars that I have discussed would be our focus for the medium term.